61 – Sofia 61

Author: Dinah Livingstone. Published September 2003 in issue 61 of Sofia.

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Contents

Articles
Reviews
Poetry
Regulars and Occasionals

Editorial

Soulscape On Psychology and Religion ‘There is an "inscape" to explore, as well as a landscape and an outer space, and our lives are impoverished if we discount it’ Ruth Robinsion, My Odyssey, SoF Conference 2001 Apuleius’ tale of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ in The Golden who flees in fear of Venus. Psyche travels through the Ass tells the story of the most beautiful princess landscape, without rest, in search of her beloved.

Psyche who is condemned to death by the jealous Commanded by Venus to perform many tasks, she is goddess Venus. Instead of going to her wedding feast, finally sent to beg Proserpine, queen of the Psyche is taken to a hill by her grieving parents and friends, to be carried by the West wind to her death. However, she finds herself carried by the wind to a heavily wooded valley with flowing sparkling streams. In the midst of the valley, she comes across ‘a royal palace too wonderfully built to be the work of anyone but a god; in fact, as soon as she came in at the gate she knew that some god must reside there’. The detail is no aside, for the myth uses the landscape to tell its troubled tale of love. It is in this city that Psyche falls in love.

The unknown god comes to her in the darkness by night and she cannot see him. It is Cupid, the god of love, who has been sent by his mother Venus to make Psyche fall in love with someone, but on seeing her he falls in love with her himself and, fearing Venus, he will not let Psyche see him. She conceives his divine child, but unable to see either her lover or underworld, for a little of her beauty. This she is to carry ina casket to Venus. Warned by Proserpine not to open the box she is again overcome by curiosity but finds the casket contains nothing but a deep sleep. It is only then that Cupid, her Love, comes and finds her. It is only by going through the dark and desolate palace of Proserpine that Psyche reaches the heights and is finally divinised by Jupiter, to appease Venus and to let Psyche marry her Love.

It is of course well known that the name ‘Psyche’ means soul, and the mythical journey of Psyche across the terrain of the valley and via the underworld into heaven has been taken to be the story of the inner journey of the soul through the troubles of life, in the search for love and for union with the divine.

In the movement of contrasts and adventure, mythology and story contain a her family she feels like a lonely prisoner in the different idea of truth from that of conceptual and beautiful palace. Granted a meeting with her sisters, analytical thinking. The latter searches for a fixed and who are jealous of her beauty, she is goaded to see unchanging idea of truth: for a truth of timeless her lover, and on doing so falls in love with Cupid, essences and unchanging absolutes. It is inspired by a 3 sof 61 September 2003 certain "philosophical" approach that seeks to detach itself from all feelings except the desire for this unchanging God—The Good, The True or The Beautiful—a linear and progressive aim to advance to perfect knowledge. Such a conceptual approach to truth has its value in that science utilises it to understand the material world and to enable material difficulties to be overcome and subsequently business exploits the findings of science to create our commercial and technological world. There is a good deal of radical religious thinking that takes this approach to truth; an approach that by a process of demythologising translates religious mythology into conceptual truth. But where beliefs become timeless truths, even liberal ones, one must fight for the supremacy of the right answer. Diversity is a threat to the idea of the unity of those faiths that are founded on revealed truth, monotheistic truth because for those faiths choice must be bad and should be condemned as "heresy". At its extremes, lives can either be liberated by such an idea of truth—such as the idea that all people are equal— or imprisoned and destroyed by such an approach to truth—as in the idea that everyone is the same. We see both in "True Religion”.

Myth and story seek to portray living truth, which is a framework of meaning in which we live.

This truth is not timeless and unchanging, where all must arrive at a fixed point, but it is open enough to allow for differences between people and changes over time. Mythology is cyclic and symbolic, like religious liturgy, and enables renewed and perhaps "deeper" engagements with its drama. It may not offer all the technological benefits of scientific advance, but it offers us a way of accepting difference, of allowing us to find ways of understanding our past while allowing us to grow, develop and change.

It is not surprising that both approaches to truth are found in psychology. While some are interested in the study of behaviour and instincts, from the behaviour of imprisoned rats to the dynamics of crowds at riots, others approach psychology in terms of the life of the psyche, the spiritual life. In this latter tradition of psychology, one undertakes a journey and explores the underworld to find one’s way, like Apuleius’ Psyche—though not always with such a sof 61 September 2003 clear or happy outcome. But it is the journeying that is of interest, and the goal that presents the ideal and the dream that informs it. Unless psychology appreciates mythology, even religious mythology, it reduces a person to a product of relationships; or to a class of introverted, intuitive, thinking and judging person; or to an extroverted, sensate, feeling, perceiving person — as in the commercialised use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® categories. It pins us down, analyses, symbolises and dissects the soul, categorising and reducing to her essence a petrified person. One is not helped through life by being a product of childhood influences, by being a prisoner of however beautiful a palace, but by being able to leave and undertake the journey of love and of self-discovery: the journey in search of fulfilment, which is a journey of divinization.

It seems that if there is a relationship between religion and psychology it is because they both can help the journey through the tribulations and joys of life, and can enable the pilgrim to engage with others, with dreams, hopes, joys, and fears. However, to do this both psychologist and theologian need to appreciate mythology—and how life’s landscape informs the inner soulscape.

Apuleius’ The Golden Ass is translated by Robert Graves, The Transformations of Apuleius, Otherwise Known as The Golden Ass, New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1972 and also by E. J. Kenney, Harmondsworth and London: Penguin, 1998.

The images of Psyche are by John William Waterhouse, 1849 — 1917.

Oliver Essame Letters’ Editor SOF Gospel Hill Cottage, Chapel Lane, Whitfield, Brackley NN1I3 5TF e-mail to oliver@essame.clara.net The proposals from John Shelby Spong and Don Cupitt in the article "New Reformation of the Churches” (SOF60) crystallised the debate and aspirations of those of us within and without the churches (for many years I have been, by choice, outside the churches) and offer a way of looking at religion without which it will either die out completely or become the preserve of the fanatic and fundamentalist.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Bishop Spong's proposals continue to make reference, however tentatively, to God, whereas Don Cupitt avoids the old terminology completely.

This is surely the only way forward for people who have felt it necessary, through their own life experiences, to let go of God completely. I would like, from time to time, to take part in some sort of religious gathering but, for whatever reason, feel completely uncomfortable when any mention of God is made.

In "Renewing the religious imagination", and "Letting identities go", Don Cupitt, in his usual concise and refreshing style, sums up what is probably the view of many people inside and outside the Sea of Faith. This, coupled with the laudable main editorial thrust of SOF60 in discussing Religion and Social Justice ('"...if radical theology is to be just, it needs to be a politically suspicious theology...."), offers a genuinely new and challenging view of religion as it may possibly become.

But this whole approach was—for me at least— confused and muddled by the articles about, and by, the late Dorothee Sélle. She was undoubtedly a highly gifted theologian and person of deep spirituality, but her repeated mentioning of God in a way which at the very least implied the "real" existence of God not only made me feel uncomfortable but also seemed at odds with the rest of the Magazine.

I know Sea of Faith is not meant to be dogmatic or narrow in its views, but I felt that these articles somehow were out of place in the magazine of a group which exists to “explore and promote religious faith as a human creation." Perhaps someone would be able to show me how I may be wrong in this assumption?

— Nicholas Smith, Les Carroz, France

Nicholas Smith 215, Route Des Cyclamens 74300 Les Carroz, France Nick@chaletcyclamen.com First we had Miles Howarth’s eloquent plea for New Expressions (Postscript, SOF56), then we had John Gamlin’s call for a shift From Doubting to Doing (Postscript, SOF57) and now we have Don Cupitt’s attempt to Redefine the Church’s Role (New Reformation of the Churches, SOF 60).

Sadly, however, this last contribution, while calling for “urgent renewal’, is short on specific and practical proposals. My view, which is certainly shared by many local groups (if not in the HQ of the Ocean of Doubt), is that although DIY religion is indeed hard work much has sof 61 September 2003 ac TE already been achieved in the field of Alternative Worthship, and that it is along such lines that acceptable language for communal ritual and post-Christian liturgy can persuade modern "seekers" to repopulate our parish churches.

The basic requirement is to recognise the widespread demand for public ceremonies, giving expression to the solidarity of the silent majority in needing to celebrate, using enlightened language of the human spirit, in a numinous or hallowed-by-time "sacred" building of architectural distinction and a good acoustic.

Secular worthship (celebrating the worthwhile or worthy) and advocating a non-materialist lifestyle (living simply that others may simply live) can build on the music and poetry (little else) that currently gets people into church.

— Bruce Nightingale

Bruce Nightingale bruce.nightingale@btinternet.com In SOF60 John Spong and Don Cupitt have done a good job in listing all the features of their teachings that the Christian churches will have to drop to become relevant in the 21st century: just about everything! But what is left when that has been done? A non-theistic ethical system that leaves humanity utterly alone in the Universe, even more alienated from the nature that surrounds us than in the churches’ theistic teachings.

Why not investigate the polytheistic pantheism of premonotheistic tribal religions to which the Pagan movement is returning? They conceive their gods and goddesses as all pervasive living energies that suffuse the universe, and all living beings on Earth, including ourselves both men and women, and with whom each one of us can communicate.

But to recover that sense of immanent divinity within us we have to let go of our rational minds and open our hearts!

— Frederic Lamond, Wernberg, Austria

Frederic Lamond Moosweg 3, A9241 Wernberg, Austria I always enjoy the "Bluffer's Guides" and was delighted to find another in SOF60 (Bluffer’s Guide to Post Colonial Theologies) However, I was saddened to note the absence of any reference to African/black theology. Once again, Africa seems to have fallen from the map.

As in other colonised parts of the world, Christianity has been both blessing and curse in Africa. At its best though, African/black theology has been a power and inspiration for liberation, not only from political oppression but also from the socio-cultural colonisation that has "informed" Africans of our backwardness and inferiority.

Some of the most exciting contemporary writing draws on the myths of Africa, the concept of ubuntu (I am because you are") popularised by Desmond Tutu, and local contextual Bible readings with untrained (and often illiterate) people who offer some most surprising insights ("Jesus is tricky and God is undemocratic" to quote the title of an excellent publication by Graham Phillpott).

— Janet Trisk, Grahamstown, South Africa